25th and final day of the Kiani advent calendar. It’s labeled “glamorous earl grey” but I’m pretty sure it’s the same as this one. This tea is suitably festive because it’s glittery and I won’t pretend to mind. I’m a sucker for the entrancing, shining, sparkling swirls that glitter teas make in my mug. Definitely a trend I’m not sick of yet. Otherwise, though, this seems like a pretty standard earl grey. Which is… fine? Earl grey just isn’t my favorite kind of tea, so I don’t really feel that I can speak to a specific blend’s relative merits with a whole lot of nuance. The bergamot here is definitely strong but not overwhelming or alcoholic. For a blend that I’m not super fond of, I did manage to finish the mug and even finish off a second steeping, though that was in significant part because I was more interested in the sparklies. Still, if the tea itself had been appallingly bad, I wouldn’t have been able to drink it no matter how pretty, so there is that to commend it.
I’m glad I tried this advent calendar, but I probably won’t do it again. The teaware was fun but I have that now! I never even opened or used the matcha scoop because I already have one and I rarely drink matcha that fancy (if anyone wants it, it’s yours free, just let me know). A pretty significant disadvantage of this advent is that it only provides enough leaf each day for exactly one serving, so it’s hard to experiment with optimal brewing methods and preparations. While many of the teas were tasty, some would have benefited from gong fu brewing vs mug steeping, or vice versa, and I just wasn’t able to test that out. I was most intrigued by the Iranian teas, so if I order from Kiani again in the future it will probably be to just get more Iranian tea rather than an advent.
It also took me almost a year to finish the nine advent calendars I got in 2022! That’s too many! This year I only got three that I’ll be opening in December, so hopefully that will be much more manageable.
